The Weblog Review

Scott and Ellen are the folks in charge here, the masterminds behind this whole site, if you will. They’re a happily (from the looks and sounds of it) married couple who find solace and some type of entertainment value in posting their thoughts and meanderings to the world wide web via amcgltd.com.

Between the two of them, they post with both quality and quantity, a feat not achieved by many weblogs. And their posts compliment each other so nicely. The slight banter that may happen to go back and forth between the two in their posting doesn’t reflect that of a feuding family, but more of an entertaining and casual repartee that adds humor to the posts.

The site design is the classic three column layout, but it certainly works in both a functional and appealing manner for this site. There’s tons of information – link, pictures, contests, recommendations, etc – that fill both side columns.



Not only are the archives set up in a monthly category, but also by the different subject matter at hand, ranging anywhere from Naughty Bits to NASA Follies and from Science Fiction to, of course, cats. Just from glancing at the variety of topics, you can instantly tell there will be something to grab your interest while visiting this site. I really like how each entry has an icon that corresponds with the archiving category that the entry falls into.

Reading through the archives, I got to follow along with Ellen and her new found passion/obsession of belly dancing and her adoration of cats. And I got the chance to read Scott’s long-winded (but insightful!) tales, thoughts, and personal essays regarding a great deal of various things.

Digging into the highlights that Scott and Ellen have distinguished in the upper left hand corner of the site, I read quite the assortment of entries. The humor in the story of how Scott made it through math in school (mightily scary, I might add) contrasts so much from his very perceptive essays on the situation going on in middle eastern countries.

This is a really great site. It’s hard to categorize the type of weblog this is. Perhaps it’s a personal site, since some of it is the happenings that go on in Scott and Ellen’s life. Or perhaps it’s a news/links type of site with all of the links that the tag-team authors provide. One specific reader’s ideas of what this site is mainly about will probably greatly differ from the next reader, but both will be pleasantly surprised at the huge amount of great content they’ll find at this site. There’s not a single thing about the site I didn’t like.AMCGLTD.COM

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loved Nick’s. From the minute I clicked into this blog I was spellbound by the content I found there. Funny, viewer-friendly, and sassy. Yes, I said sassy. And I mean that in a good way.



As far as design, the site is well-done, and I really like the layout and color scheme. He has a no-nonsense design that allowed me to fully enjoy the completely nonsensical blog.



I was devastated when I couldn’t find an “about me” page – after reading through a dozen blog entries I was desperate to find out more about Nick. When I couldn’t find one, I settled back into his blog and quickly realized that all I needed to know about him was right there all along.



In a typical entry he provides pictures (the funniest I saw was the cat on June 29, 2002) or observations (his June 25, 2002 riff on short-statured actors or his January 29, 2002 general rant), and the laughs just keep coming.



I suggest you run, don’t walk, to this blog and read every entry. He’s been around since October 2001 and has many a fun tale to tell. Well worth bookmarking for future enjoyment – I know I did.Nick’s

9 and 3 Quarters is a cute blog. The owner, Jade, is a perky writer – dragging you into her adventures almost from the start. While the blog looked to be only three months old, she had enough entries that I could easily figure out what kind of person she might be.



The design of 9 and 3 Quarters is simple enough – her nav bar is obvious and easy to navigate through, although I found that it covered up part of the main text area at times. I attempted to look at it through another browser and had the same problem, so I don’t believe it was on my end. She has chosen a color scheme and font that is easy on the eye as well. There were a few graphics that didn’t come up, but other than that the site design was near-perfect in it’s simplicity.



Jade hosts other websites but other than providing links for those and the cliques she’s a part of, the site is pretty much just a blog. And that’s okay, because she doesn’t seem to wish to be anything but that. Perhaps in the future she’ll change her mind and do more with the site, but for now, there’s not a lot of content since it’s a young blog. But give her a few more months and it’ll probably become a regular read for me.



If you are a young female this blog is for you – that’s who Jade is. If you are something else you may not strictly identify with the website itself. But if you stick around and read her posts you’ll find a fun storyteller who is pretty savvy. 9 and 3 Quarters

The color brown washes over you when you enter the Boston Dyke Log. The traditionally blue links, and there are many, vibrate jarringly against the brown. The blog itself is easy-to-read black Times Roman.

The author, Gina A. Pond, describes herself as a Wiccan priest and biochemist, a single, left-of-democrat, feminist lesbian who dreams of living on an island with her coven. She uses her site to “think aloud” about political and spiritual issues, as well as lighter parts of her life. Two recent multi-paragraph postings concern the spread of AIDS in China and thoughtful musings on whether feminism is a sisterhood. An older post describes the awkward situation of being proselytized to by a relative when you have no interest in Christianity. Pond’s target audience would include feminists, lesbians, and believers in alternative spirituality, especially those who like to think aloud about the issues they confront.

The writing is clear and thoughtful. It reads as if some entries are carefully thought out and polished, while others are enthusiastically and quickly blogged. The design and content go together all right if you don’t mind lots of brown, but the archive pages are not linked to the design elements, so they don’t match the current blog page. Other than that, everything works.

One major bonus is a page of links to Pond’s stories, essays, and poems. If you like her style, you’ll enjoy reading these bold and sometimes erotic pieces. To me, though, the weblog is the most interesting part because it’s the most current.

Feminists, lesbians, and other offbeat women with an interest in activism, politics, or spiritual exploration will enjoy this site.
The BostonDyke Log

“Epicycles” is the theory created by pre-Copernican astronomers to explain away the movements of the planets that countered the accepted heliocentric view. This definition can be found in elaborated form near the bottom of Epicycle’s front page. With that statement and the astronomical map that is the background image of Epicycle, you can see right away the scientific and technological focus of this site.



Epicycle feels more like one of those 1995 personal sites than a standard blog. The “About Me” page gives the writer’s full name as well as a photo, family information, and job history. It also gives a list of the published works of Dominic Thomas, the person behind Epicycle. Other sections on the site include pages devoted to Dominic’s home-built computer, his space models, Dominic’s digital art, his father’s monograms, and his fiction; all are worth a look.



The blog itself is chock full of tech jargon that can turn off a normal web surfer, but not me. Reading about the trial and tribulations of a network analyst as he combats the Yaha worm is refreshing. Every entry is about technology, from recommending a cyberpunk-influencing novel to the solving his sound card problems. Sometimes all the tech-talk can get a bit much, as the writer does assume a certain level of know-how that most people do not have, including myself. But it is still worth a read, if only to marvel at the writer’s in-depth technical knowledge.



Stylistically, Epicycle is not the prettiest thing to look at. It does present the content in an easy to read manner, but there is no sophistication of color or design. Otherwise, it is a very nice site.



Epicycle is unique among blogs. It’s an old-time site that offers the reader much more than daily musings, it gives us the world as seen through a tech-head’s eyes. It is worth visiting, especially if you are at all interested in computers, and even if you are not.
Epicycle